Horsemen's War (The Rebellion Chronicles #3) - Steve McHugh Page 0,113

it.”

“So we’re powerless?” Selene asked.

“Inside the building, yes,” Roberto said.

“You got any weapons left in here?” Chloe asked.

“No, of course not,” Roberto said, motioning to four FBI agents, who were bringing up the rear, each one carrying a crate of guns into the building. “But we brought some with us; I assume these will do.”

The guns were mostly a combination of MP5s, Sig Sauer nine millimeters, and Glock 17s, although there were a few that didn’t fall into those camps. Layla took a Glock 17 and a handful of magazines. She still had a sword that hung from her hip and a few daggers at her back, but if she was going to lose her power, that meant losing her arm too. That was not something she was going to be able to do much about.

“Tego, you stay here,” Layla said. “If any enemies come down, kill them.”

Tego snorted and sat down.

When everyone was geared up, the large group separated, each going to one of two stairwells. Roberto took his team, along with Jinayca, Layla, and two Secret Service agents, while everyone else went with the soldiers.

The stair climb was tense, and no one spoke, Layla and Jinayca taking point the whole way up. Jinayca carried a Remington 870 twelve-gauge shotgun, and Layla was a hundred percent certain she knew how to use it. Everyone took a radio, and Layla put the earpiece in place and activated it.

When they reached the fourth floor, Layla’s metal forearm and hand melted away. She sighed.

They reached the fifth floor soon after and found the door to be almost bent in half. “Sure about the no-powers thing?” Layla asked, looking back at Roberto.

“Not now,” Roberto said with a shake of his head.

Layla pushed the door open and stepped inside the corridor beyond. It was oddly quiet, and she knew that the other half of the team would be moving through an identical door, into an identical corridor, on the other side of the floor.

There were seven dead in the corridor, slumped up against walls. All of them wore tactical gear and still had their weapons in their hands. Blood spray covered large parts of the wall. There were bullet holes in the floor and ceiling, too, but no bodies of their attackers. That didn’t bode well for just how dangerous a foe Layla and her team were about to encounter.

“Lamashtu and her elves,” Jinayca said. “I’m guessing we found them.”

They all moved slowly along the corridor, the FBI agents in their tactical gear checking the various rooms along the way.

They reached the end of the corridor, and the FBI and Roberto took point.

“Can we take out the runes?” Layla asked, looking at the bright purple-and-blue marks all over the walls.

“No,” Jinayca said. “I checked them. You cut through them, this whole place explodes. You try to remove them without the proper work-around, they explode. I could do it if I had maybe an hour. I doubt even Zamek could do it in less, and he put them here.”

The FBI agents crouched behind the door and placed a camera under it to check for explosives or people who might be waiting to shoot anyone coming through. They turned around and nodded to Roberto.

“It’s clear,” he said.

The agents opened the door and crept into the room beyond. Layla and Jinayca took up the rear, and as they reached the door, they could already see the FBI agents and soldiers from the other team moving around the edges of the room to converge before the stairwell.

Layla knew that the stairwell leading from the floor they were on to the offices above would be a death trap. She looked out of the large windows that faced the street below. More runes were drawn on them. Zamek was nothing if not thorough. She continued to stare for several seconds; something was off about them.

And then it hit her.

They weren’t dwarven.

“Everyone down,” Layla shouted as the windows exploded inward toward everyone in the lower part of the office, showering them in glass.

The FBI agents closest were already hunkered behind several overturned tables and chairs that had been piled around the lower level, but the soldiers that had come with Layla from Avalon found themselves bombarded with the blast and the glass it created, which cut through several of them as they dived aside.

Bullets rained down from above, and Layla saw two soldiers die from the gunfire as they retreated back toward the corridor. One of the FBI agents, a young